The Governor’s meeting went quite well, he was surprisingly candid in everything he said. He expressed a great deal of concern with how our administration run its operations, and use its funds. While early on it seemed dead set that he would not think of the state related schools in this tuition relief act proposal, we are now at a place where we have engaged him. I still believe we have a ways to go, but having the direct ear of the governor is always a positive.

That’s good to hear. Wondering what he means when he said the Governor was surprisingly candid?

If there’s ever been a moral imperative of controlling tuition, it’s now. We’re just a few steps behind the Great Depression from the 1920s and 1930s.

I bet you my right arm that I could get in here and cut costs by 5 percent. When’s the last time anybody said no to the football program?

You know you have two law schools — do you think there’s any reason for a second law school? This is a problem.

The following day, the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments held a rally at the capitol to raise awareness about the budget crunch. Keirans et al were at this event too. Again, the issue is Penn State’s exclusion from the tuition relief act.

Here’s a video produced by the Patriot News of the Rally at the Rotunda.

“The state system schools and community colleges have done a better job keeping the tuition costs down, and the state has more input and control over the expenses and cost of the tuition there than they do at Penn State,” said Rendell spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo.

All in all, it doesn’t seem like much came out of the two days worth of events. I’d love to hear some dissenting arguments in the comments though…

To paraphrase Mark Twain: The reports of higher education’s death have been an exaggeration. American universities produce more research and relevant knowledge for the world at large than any other institutions I know of. Tuition may be too damn high, but over the long-run, undergraduate degrees are definitely worth the cost. But Penn State could be so much more. It used to be, I think.

A Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board hearing began on Tuesday in Pittsburgh for former Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin, who is accused of violating rules of professional conduct in her representation of former university administrators during the Jerry Sandusky investigation.